That it was customary in ancient times to bury the dead outside the city-walls the holy Bible bears witness, even as far back as in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, where it is recorded how Abraham bought the field of Macphelah of Ephron the Hittite, "and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, (and) that were in all the borders round about." (Chap. xxiii.) Here we find a rural cemetery in a green field bordered with trees, in which the venerable patriarch buried his wife nearly four thousand years ago, while we, with all our boasted improvements, are in the present day thrusting the dead together in countless thousands, in the very heart of our close and over-crowded cities--where the living have scarcely room enough to breathe, and the dead of to-day are crammed amongst the remains which have been disinterred to give them a short lodgment; when they again in turn are cast out, and mysteriously consumed or pounded into the smallest possible compass under our very eyes, in so unfeeling, heartless, and brutal a manner, that we dare not shock our readers with the revolting details. The head-stone, reared by the hand of pious affection, instead of pointing to the remains it was erected to commemorate, stands over the graves of strangers, and we shed our tears over those whom we never knew; while the sexton and the grave-digger grin at us behind the neighbouring tomb-stones, chinking the silver in their pockets, and laughing to think that the paupers whom they shoved into "our" grave on the previous night in a "huggermugger" way should be wept over by the broken-hearted mourner whom they have thus cheated. With these facts dinned into our ears every day by the uplifted voice of the press, are we not guilty of disrespect towards the dead by burying them in these ever-changing and common lodging-houses? We know not where their remains are to be found at the end of the year; cannot tell whether they have been removed to lay the foundation of a new road, or sold and ground up to manure some distant field. Let us not forget that when the heathen Greeks and Romans brought the remains of their heroes and poets into their ancient temples, the bodies were first burnt, and only the ashes preserved in richly sculptured urns, on which the achievements of the dead were pictured: their classical minds fashioned "a thing of beauty" out of the ashes of the departed; they gave to the dead a beautiful dwelling-place, and those who were buried unscathed by the funeral fire were interred in cemeteries where trees were planted over them, and marble monuments erected; and, idolators though they were, such places were held sacred, and were called "the silent cities of the dead," and were ever remote from the abodes of the living.